The present invention relates to a photographic printer, and in particular to a photographic printer which incorporates a bill printer for printing out a bill including the price of photofinishing, and in which each print is recorded with the frame number of the image recorded on a negative photographic film (referred to hereinafter simply as a negative image) from which that print is made.
Most customers request the photofinisher to make prints at the same time the film is developed. In the developing-printing process, an exposed film is developed, and the negative images recorded on the film are printed onto photographic paper. Thereafter, the film is cut into several pieces, e.g. of six picture frames each, and the film pieces are inserted in a film cover sheath to preserve them. The film pieces in the film cover sheath are returned to the customer along with the prints.
Recently, a printer-processor has been used often for printing, wherein a large area transmittance density (LATD) of each image is measured, and a fundamental print exposure for each of three primary colors is calculated for each image based on the LATD thereof. Although about 70% of the prints made using the respective fundamental print exposures would have proper density and color balance, the remaining 30% would have improper density and color balance, and would have subject failure. Therefore, photofinishers have determined suitable exposure correction values experientially, including yellow, cyan, and magenta color correction values as well as density correction values, for each of those prints that otherwise may have subject failure, and have corrected the fundamental print exposures for those images by the corresponding exposure correction values.
In the meantime, because a single print is made from each picture frame of a film in the above-described developing-printing process, when the customer wishes to have more than one print of the same image, the customer requests an extra print. However, often the extra print is made by a different photofinisher, so that the exposure correction values used for the extra prints may well be different from those used in the original developing-printing process. Even if the same photofinisher determines the exposure correction values, the values will not always be equal to those used for the initial printing. For this reason, a conventional extra print often does not have the same density or color balance as the original print.
The applicant for the present invention has proposed a film sheath printing system in which the respective frame numbers are printed not only onto the rear surface of the prints, but also onto a film sheath so as to be superposed on the respective negative images when the film pieces are inserted in the film sheath. Further, exposure correction data used in printing the images of the respective frames are printed on the film sheath along with the respective frame numbers.
However, such a film sheath printing system is intended for use in a large photofinishing laboratory where a large number of films are spliced to form a roll of long film, and the long film is subjected to developing and printing at a high speed. Therefore, it is necessary for the film sheath printing system to use a specific film splicing device, printer, film cutting-inserting device, and so forth, so that the printer-processor becomes large and complex. For this reason, it is difficult to adopt the above printing system in a small photofinishing laboratory (so-called mini-lab) where prints are made for each roll of photographic film.